Stadium and Training Facilities
For more details on this topic, see St Mary's Stadium and The Dell (Southampton).St Mary's Stadium has been home to the Saints since August 2001. It has a capacity of 32,689 and is one of only a handful of stadia in Europe to meet UEFA's Four Star criteria. In the 2004–05 season, attendances never fell below 30,000, although in more recent seasons attendances have inevitably been in decline. In 2012 the Saints returned to the Premier League and in doing so recorded their biggest attendance on 28 April against Coventry City of 32,363.
The stadium has also been host to a number of internationals including England's qualifying game against FYR Macedonia in 2002 where the teams drew 2–2, with David Beckham and Steven Gerrard scoring for England.
The club's previous home was The Dell, to which it moved in 1898 and at which it remained for 103 years.
The club's training facilities, known as Staplewood are located in Marchwood, on the edge of the New Forest. They have received significant investment over the last 10 years, most notably during the time Sir Clive Woodward was employed by the club between 2005 and 2006, and are now considered to be among some of the best in the country. However on 8 December 2009, it was confirmed that these facilities would be ripped down and replaced with a new "state of the art" two-storey building.
On 18 October 2011, a record attendance of 32,152 watched the 1–0 victory against West Ham United, beating the previous record set on 29 December 2003 when 32,151 watched the 1–0 Premier League defeat by Arsenal. However, this was broken for the second time in the same season when 32,363 watched the 4–0 victory against Coventry on 28 April 2012.
Read more about this topic: Southampton F.C.
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